II. SOCIAL JUSTICE
L. Housing and Homelessness

Housing is one of the basic necessities of life, yet too many people can no longer afford adequate shelter. Government should play an activist role in the availability of housing.

Rents have soared due to real estate speculation. One out of five renters pays more than fifty percent of their income for housing. Fewer than one in ten renters can afford to buy a median-priced house in the area where they live. In an era of deregulation, tenants have had few legal protections, and those that exist have begun to erode. Rent control and eviction protection for tenants does not exist in most jurisdictions, and where it does, it is usually inadequate and under attack. Landlords who, in violation of housing code requirements, fail to keep their property in habitable condition are tolerated, or at most given lenient penalties. Housing discrimination remains rampant against people of color, immigrants, disabled, single people, gays and lesbians, and families with children.

It is conservatively estimated that one million people are homeless. Today, homeless people are hounded, threatened, and often can not obtain badly needed services. Though affordable housing could help alleviate the problem of homelessness, the homeless have needs that go beyond housing.

The twenty-year decline in real wages for workers is also a major contribution to the current crisis in housing availability and affordability. Certain laws have also contributed to the problems of housing supply and cost, and are in some cases consciously used to exclude households with lower incomes from higher income communities.

Areas of local law that should be revisited include: ordinances that prohibit a shift toward co-housing; land use plans that provide excessive amounts of land for industrial and commercial use; and inflexible building codes that prevent alternative (often less expensive) construction approaches that still meet health and safety requirements.

The Green Party recognizes housing as a human right, and will work toward eliminating economic and other forms of discrimination in the construction and use of housing through the following policies:

Renter's Rights

1. Protect tenants with rent control laws, including vacancy control.

2. Prevent evictions without just cause. Restrict owner move-in evictions of long-term tenants, the elderly, and disabled persons.

3. Crack down on landlords who refuse to maintain their properties in habitable condition, or who engage in illegal evictions, with hefty fines and, in extreme cases, jail terms.

Increase Affordable Housing Supply

4. Enforce laws against illegal hotel conversions.

5. Use vacant housing - whether at closed military bases, housing kept off the market by speculators, or landlords delinquent in taxes - to shelter homeless persons.

6. Build human-scale, low income housing (as does Habitat for Humanity).

7. Pursue more efficient use of our existing housing supply, such as home-sharing and cooperative conversions of existing dwellings.

8. Subsidies, trade-offs with developers, and the creative use of city and county zoning ordinances should be used to increase affordable housing.

Measures to Help Homeless Persons

9. Expand community-based services for homeless persons and make them more readily available.

10. Repeal all laws that criminalize any facet of homelessness or helping homeless persons.

11. Abolish anti-sleeping laws, especially in areas which don't have adequate open space, shelter and sleeping areas for homeless persons.

12. Strictly enforce all the laws that are designed to provide for the homeless, such as the laws that require opening National Guard armories to homeless persons during inclement weather.

13. Allow homeless people to take part in decisions about long- and short-term solutions to their situation.

14. Strengthen and increase funding of mental health and drug rehabilitation systems.

Strong Fair-Housing Laws

15. Strengthen and enforce fair-housing laws against discrimination based on race, sex, familial status (children), marital status, disability, or sexual orientation.

16. Fully fund the Fair Employment and Housing Commission and provide generous government funding to non-profit organizations engaged in fair housing monitoring and enforcement.

17. Insist that architectural review boards and planning commissions represent the concerns of citizens, rather than the concerns of economic segments of the community.

Reform Zoning and Building Codes

18. Implement low-impact, site-specific designs that encourage human-scale development and environmentally sensitive planning. Promote development that encourages urban density - with green spaces - and that discourages urban sprawl.

19. Remove restrictions on converting large, single family homes to multi-family use. Families of today are smaller and there are more single-parent households.

20. Allow industrial and commercial developers to provide housing instead of parking spaces in new developments, and permit housing development in existing industrial and commercial zones.

21. Reform zoning, occupancy, and building ordinances so that residential needs can exist in balance with commercial and industrial needs, and so that alternative approaches are encouraged rather than restricted.

II. SOCIAL JUSTICE
L. Housing and Homelessness

1. Shelter, like food, health care and education, is a social necessity that a democratic society is obliged to secure for all its citizens.

2. In recent years, the cost of housing, to rent or purchase, has outdistanced the income of a large percentage of the population. While the real estate business, building owners and developers have thrived on rising prices, many workers and fixed-income people, whose income has been diminished or static, have lost their homes and their place in the economy.

3. We support government policies that redress years of special benefits to developers and property owners and no benefits to citizens and small business. A level playing field is necessary for all to share in the society, the economy and to have equal access to their government. A lack of legal protection has allowed the eviction of 1,000s of tenants while the gap between the rich and the rest of society goes wider and wider..

4. Greens advocate:
   1. Rent control over rise in rents including vacancy control..
   2. Subsidize co-operative ownership of apartment buildings.
   3. Re-write building codes to increase obligation that developers include affordable units for low-income tenants in their rehabilitated apartment buildings.
   4. States write laws that require creation of Tenants Advocacy Office that protects tenants from eviction when landlord wants to upgrade and raise price of their holdings. Especially protection for the elderly and disabled persons.
   5. Strict inspection schedule by inspectors and heavy fines of owners who fail to maintain their buildings.
   6. Revise zoning laws to expand area that allows group housing.
   7. Build public housing on low and small human scale and allow a tenant to buy his unit.
   8. Enact State laws on inclusionary zoning that requires developers to include units for low income tenants.

5. Measures to Help Homeless Persons

   At the bottom of the pile are the homeless - around one million. Many homeless people have low-wage jobs but can’t afford to pay rent and are forced to live in shelters or on the street.

   1. Open homeless shelters in areas near public transportation and close enough to work places for homeless people to get to work.
   2. Repeal laws that criminalize any facet of homelessness including where they sleep, or that deny citizens the right to help homeless persons.
   3. Re-affirm and enforce laws that open public buildings for the homeless in freezing weather.
   4. Open feeding stations that guarantee two meals/day to homeless people.

6. Enforce fair_housing laws against discrimination based on race, sex, familial status (children), marital status, disability, or sexual orientation.

7. Fully fund the Fair Employment and Housing Commission that funds non_profit organizations engaged in fair housing monitoring and enforcement.

8. All commercial, industrial, and residential buildings must be designed and built according to a green code, both in design and in materials used.

9. Implement low-impact, site-specific designs that encourage human-scale development and promote development that encourages urban density, with green spaces, and that discourages urban sprawl.